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City Makes Your Dreams Come True?The
enduring appeal of cities is at least partially supported by cognitive biases.
Cardoso, R., Meijers, E., Van Ham, M., Burger, M., &
De Vos, D. (2019). Why bright city lights dazzle and illuminate: A cognitive
science approach to urban promises. Urban Studies, 56(2), 452–470.Source:https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0042098018804762Picture source: https://www.wallpaperflare.com/white-vehicle-night-artwork-futuristic-city-cyberpunk-science-fiction-wallpaper-wpo/downloadWhy
do people go to cities? The promise of “Better City, Better Life” has always attracted people. Maybe it's a better job, maybe it's a better
income, maybe it's a higher socio-economic status, maybe it's a better
education, maybe it's a better healthcare, maybe it's a better
museum/concert/talk show/musical ......, maybe it's a freer and happier life,
maybe it's to meet people, different or similar, maybe it's to be seen, heard
and appreciated instead of being discriminated against, or maybe it's to
realize your dreams and ambitions… Cities seem to have a magic power that
allows one to break away from the old environment that binds and represses one,
and to truly be yourself or recreate yourself in the city. These perceptions
and expectations of the advantages of the city can be called “urban promise”.However,
the bright lights of the city do not shine fairly on everyone. The promise of the
city fails too many people. The benefits of cities are not available everywhere
and for everyone. Studies have shown that the advantages of cities tend to
benefit a small number of urban elites the most, while the majority of city
dwellers are at least partially excluded from the socio-economic benefits of
urban growth (see CityReads | Benefits of Big City largely Go to the Elite).
Cities offer high rewards for the privileged and the most able, but can be a
source of disillusionment for the less talented or less privileged.Cities
offer not only opportunities, but also conflict, inequality and high costs of
living. However, even when the reality is not as expected, newcomers remain
convinced that the city will offer them a better future. Despite the difficulties,
despite the frustrations, despite the objective socio-economic consequences and
the subjective experience of urban life that often compare poorly with
expectations, people continue to come to cities. Why do people have such
positive, enduring and possibly overestimated expectations of cities?A
2018 paper published in Urban Studies, Why bright city lights dazzle and
illuminate: a cognitive science approach to urban promises, uses relevant
theories about cognitive biases from cognitive science to answer this question.
The paper analyzes the process of urban migration from the perspective of
decision-making under uncertainty, and explores how decisions and assessments
of urban migration are based on imperfect information, and how cognitive biases
and heuristics limit human rationality, thus affecting people's responses to
urban promises, contributing to an understanding of how people make decisions
about urban migration, and how people perceive their urban experiences and
assess their life stories. The authors argue that the enduring appeal of cities
is at least partially supported by cognitive biases, which could explain why
many people stay in cities despite not being able to realize their dreams
there.Stories
of urban economic opportunity and migrant success fuel the urban promise, but
urban life also creates negative social and health impacts, the former of which
are strongly highlighted and the latter of which are ignored. A study of
rural-urban migration in the United Kingdom, which was the first country to
experience industrialization and urbanization, from 1851 to 1881 found that
migration was not motivated by famine or poverty, but rather by the expectation
of improved opportunities for socio-economic mobility, thereby escaping the
intergenerational transmission of rural hopelessness. Rural-urban migrants are
highly selective; they are the most skilled and entrepreneurial people in the
countryside, and they achieve a much higher socio-economic status after moving
to cities than those who remain in the countryside. However, these successful
migrants are in fact the lucky ones who survived the harsh industrial urban
environment. During the 30-year period between 1851-1881, the urban mortality
rate in Britain was 50 percent higher than the rural rate, life expectancy in
the cities was about 10 years lower than that in the countryside, and was even
worse in the large cities, which were then referred to as the graves of the
rural people. Engels described the squalor of Manchester as “hell upon
earth”. The situation was not reversed until after the
1930s.While
the quality of life in contemporary cities is much better than in early
industrial cities - for example, life expectancy is higher in cities than in
rural areas, and maternal mortality rates are much lower in cities than in
rural areas - a number of urban problems remain: traffic congestion is worse in
large cities, the risk of spreading infectious diseases is higher, housing
prices are higher, living space per capita is smaller, and residents'
subjective sense of well-being is lower, among other things. The history of
rapid growth in many large cities shows that the urban experience is dirty,
crowded and poor, but also full of opportunities. In the gap between urban
expectations and urban experience lies the power of urban promise, but also the
pitfalls.The cognitive psychology of urban promiseWhile
in many ways cities offer many benefits to their inhabitants, they also trap
them in dreams and fantasies of the city. The powerful appeal of cities and
their associated narratives are based not only on what cities actually offer,
but also on what people think they can offer. And most decisions in life are
actually based on the latter. Unsurprisingly, in complex environments, outcomes
do not reflect initial expectations, but in everyday life this discrepancy is
ignored. Urban promise is a striking example of just such a phenomenon,
persisting over time and across geographic boundaries, and continuing to
influence people's lives.The
paper analyzes how people understand and practice urban migration, even if it
does not lead to the realization of their urban dreams, in terms of cognitive
biases such as generalizations about individual cases, overly optimistic
self-assessment bias, overconfidence in themselves and in their ability to
control their environment, and rationalization of failures, respectively.Indeed,
any historical overview of the rapid growth of the largest cities suggests that
they were experienced as dirty, crowded and poor, but also expected to be rich
in opportunity (Williams and Donald, 2011). In this gap between the expected
and the experienced lies the strength of urban promises, but also their
pitfalls, as the downsides of urban life are neglected.If
migration to cities can be seen as a life-changing adventure with uncertain
outcomes, then persistent migration to cities can also be explained by the law
of small numbers. The law of small numbers is a cognitive bias that refers to
the tendency to draw generalized conclusions based on a small amount of data.
For example, an anecdote about the success of a distant acquaintance who
migrated to the city may be enough to send others down the same path. Taleb
points to the human “survivorship bias,” the tendency to choose
stories of winners to inspire us to action, while ignoring the large number of
losers. Narratives of urban opportunity carefully select a few success stories but
it does not specify their probability of success is likely to be extremely low.In
an environment filled with positive messages about urban opportunity and
personal empowerment, it is easy to reconstruct past or ongoing life stories
that reflect the illusion of control over external events and recognize the
causal relationships that confirm the “forces of nature” that make cities better places to live. As a result, forces from
the opportunity structure of urban space are exaggerated and assumed to be
within our power to control, while inequalities in individual skills and social
security, or the element of luck, are ignored.The
tendency of the majority of people to perceive themselves as having better
qualities and future prospects than the majority of the population is known as
the “better-than-average” effect. A study of the
gap between actual and perceived upward economic mobility in terms of
employment and material well-being in 26 OECD countries found that individuals'
perceived mobility was higher than actual mobility. Most people perceive that
their lives have improved over time, but perceive that the average person's
life has not. Upward urban mobility may only be open to some, but everyone
tends to believe that it will include or has included them. People are correct
in their perception that cities offer unparalleled opportunities, but poor
perceptions of risk, overconfidence, and the illusion of control may blind them
to the relentless competition and injustice embedded in them.Cognitive
biases strongly influence the expectations and decisions of individuals who
move to cities. But why do people stay even in the face of negative experiences
and failed expectations? The costs of failure are difficult to measure because
they are often rationalized in a self-delusional way to protect self-esteem and
motivate us to try again. This cognitive bias is known as the sunk cost
fallacy, or escalation of commitment.The
urban promise has fired the imagination of generations of hopeful migrants, who
have tended to exaggerate the potential benefits of cities while ignoring their
shortcomings. This tendency has been seen throughout history and in different
cultural contexts, so that the urban promise is deeply rooted in the human
psyche.Why
do people continue to have strong and positive expectations of cities even in
the face of uncertain difficulties, conflicting facts and negative experiences?
The paper borrows the theoretical framework of cognitive bias and heuristics
proposed by Daniel Kahneman to analyze urban migration as a form of
decision-making under uncertainty and to explore the psychological mechanisms
that influence how people understand and response urban promise.The
paper concludes that cognitive biases provide clues for exploring urban
problems: (1) poor perceptions of risk (the law of small numbers) explain the
exaggerated value of individual urban migration stories; (2) the illusion of
control provides fertile ground for narratives of urban triumphalism and
beliefs in the power of the city; and (3) overly optimistic self-appraisals
induce individual beliefs in upward urban mobility, ignoring inherent
injustices and competitive institutions and causes us to incorrectly assess
individual success; and (4) the escalation of commitment is one of the reasons
why cities are able to retain groups that fail to enjoy the benefits of the
city. These cognitive biases play a prominent role in how people anticipate and
perceive urban life.
1."… And
by the way, the man who told
That
London’s streets were paved with gold
Was
telling dreadful porky-pies".
(That’s
cockney rhyming slang for lies.)
The
cat went on, "To me it seems
These
streets are paved with rotten dreams.
Come
home, my boy, without more fuss.
This
lousy town’s no place for us."
—Roald Dahl, Dick Whittington and His Cat, 1989![]()
2."…cities
nurtured the potential for individuals to cooperate, specialize and invent at
scale. Without those powers, Homo sapiens never would have been able to escape
from its perilous state of subsistence."——Ian Goldin & Tom Lee-Devlin, Age of the City: Why our
Future will be Won or Lost Together![]()
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